Monday, 15 December 2014

It has yet to be discussed much....but late this week.....your Fed-Government is going to roll out this really impressive database, with fed stuff cranked into it, and basically tell you the basic damn college in America for your Johnny or Jill to attend.

I know....it's amazing....fed advice on something.

It's a ranking system, which takes into account all 7,000 colleges across America....from the local level to the state level, onto the private level.

It'll be like an NCAA football bowl database, with lots of critical pieces of info. Like for example....it'll know the graduation level of first-year students at Auburn....telling you only thirty-seven percent will make it all the way to the end....thus making you ask what happened to the other sixty-three percent (they boozed out, ran out of dad's funds, got some girl pregnant, or discovered that a community college was better).

It'll have data to tell you about assaults on campus.....and if so-and-so college is dangerous to attend.

It'll tell you if it's a mostly minority college, with lesser grade averages.

It'll tell you the tuition costs per year, what the dorms and food-pay-plan might cost.

Now, I'll admit....for the parent sitting in their living room and pondering over what Carl (all of fourteen years old) might do in four years....it might be a shocker. You go through the database and realize that an idiot studying French literature at Mississippi state....might have to pay up $72,500 for tuition, room and board, and pocket money over four years. Maybe you'd sit down with Carl and establish some thoughts over French literature not amounting to much, and talk him into a welding certificate at the community college....for the grand sum of $7,300 over two years (living at home of course).

There are some positive things that such a database might provide.....but the trouble is.....the federal government is the builder of this.....just like they built the Affordable Health Act database. Same folks. What's the odds of them building this right? And if they built it right.....why couldn't they do it with health insurance?

Ever heard of Fort Hays State University? It rests in Kansas. The yearly tuition for a IT or computer science degree? $3,472.....per year. It's the most affordable college in America with in-state tuition figured up, for the degree. Normally, most folks wouldn't care.....but if you only had $12,000 in the family account to put forward for some certificate to help Jill get some education and avoid borrowing a lot of cash.....Fort Hays makes sense.

All of this brings me back around to good intentions, incompetence by the US federal government, screwed up priorities on selecting a college, and the ranking system.

Based on a priority system.....the NCAA bowl selection process is likely to be fairly screwed up because NO one wants to allow some scenario to occur where Auburn and Alabama would meet up in the final game. So various gimmicks have been worked into the system....to ensure that Auburn and Alabama NEVER meet in such a game. The same strategy guys are likely at work with this college database....to ensure that you never get to a best over-all college. That is my humble opinion.

Letters From Ripley

Inspired by Letters from Seneca (124-essay effort) that brought Stoicism out of the shadows.

Stoicism is the concept of accepting pains, woes, sorrows, troubles, luck, gains, losses, and life as being "part of nature". Whatever happened yesterday...simply happened....I can learn from it, gain from it, and then just accept it. No matter what the score was....there is tomorrow and I simply need to put my best foot forward.

Me?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,
leads onto fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in
shallows, and in miseries. So I intend to ride out this flood upon my
virtual porch in Ripley and see where this "flood of life" takes
me...whilst sipping ice cold tea with a chunk of lemon...pondering the
comings and goings of life.